User blog:Aikenarrows/In Regards to System Glitches/ Exploits
In the beginning of any MMO, there are almost always a large number of glitches that are, over the time of the MMO, addressed and fixed, much like this wiki. That being said, it would make sense that ALO would have glitches that early players of the game would encounter. I apologize if it has been happening a lot with other contributers, but some of my characters have encountered system glitches or exploits. In fact, in the beginning of SAO, Darkness Falls, my guild, was considered to be a hacking guild. Due to Kayaba's intense focus on fairness in his world, hacking was something that could not happen in SAO, obviously. The reasoning behind Darkness Falls being refered to as a hacking guild was because of the amount of breakers in the guild's ranks. Breakers are players in MMOs who focus on specific skills and weapons not usually used by the said player's class or race. For example, take the classic class of a Ranger; in most games, Rangers are a class that uses bows and, sometimes, crossbows. In short, Rangers are a ranged dps class that excel in the use of one type of weapon: a Bow. However, as some of you are aware, most MMOs do not limit a class to one type of weapon; because of this, in some classes, Rangers are also given the ability to wield one-handed swords. But, due to a lack of skills in the Ranger's library that pertain to sword use, players usually find that sword wielding as a Ranger is useless. A breaker would be a player who chose to be a Ranger who wields a sword; by studying attack patterns and the limits of the class's abilities, he would then come up with combos or certain abilities or boosts that, when using a sword, create a battle style that is unique and useful. At face value, a breaker would appear to be someone who is using a hack of some sort to make themselves invicible or achieve max attack power. Another example would be focusing on a type of magic called music magic. In most MMOs that use this type of magic, music magic is often only used in social surroundings for party tricks by creating disco balls that automatically set all players nearby to the dance emote or to set off "fireworks" for other players to watch. Because of this, music magic is often considered to be a luxury for higher level players with nothing better to do. However, a breaker would look into how music magic effected NPCs in the field, and, if it had any effect simular to confusion magic, would use this magic to create a sort of crowd control skill. Or, if this had no effect on NPCs, breakers would still use this magic in PVP to successfully confuse and startle their enemies before attacking them. In addition to the amount of breakers in Darkness Falls, there is a beater by the name of Jesse. Because of her obvious prior knowledge of SAO and her statis as a cheater, she is also thought of as being a hacker. She is, coincidentaly, the owner of a unique skill by the name of "Dark Lightning" If you can imagine, those with unique skills are at an unfair advantage over other players. Think back to the last time you played an online game, whether through a console or your PC; how many times have you heard: "Jesus, what a hacker!" or "Are you hacking?! How did you do that?!" My story has these elements of confusion and not knowing exactly how an intense system like Cardinal works and how some players will try to find exploits in the system for their own benefit. One example of a system glitch in my story is Orenmir, Jinx's weapon, being transferred over from SAO to ALO without corruption. The following is an explantion describing how this could happen. That Orenmir also existed somewhere in ALO and, because of the simularity between the two coded versions of the weapons, the system was able to automatically repair the weapon's coded signature. Another possibility is that Orenmir's SAO code was identical to another item in ALO's coding and the end result was that the ALO item was deleted and the system decided to accept Orenmir's coding instead. Yet another explanation was that Orenmir was originally a DLC item that Kayaba somehow managed to add to both SAO and ALO. In regards to the "Kayaba" possibility, we know that, even in the virtual world, Kayaba had a way to edit aspects of a game and carry around data. This can be seen as how Heathcliffs admin privilages were available in ALO and how Kayaba could give a program (The World Seed) to Kirito, even though it was not a part of the game and could be taken outside of the game. It may be that Kayaba created other items like this that could be transferrable over different games. Reminder: as stated in canon, both ALO and SAO's systems were extremely simular to each other. I know from personal experience that weapon's coding is immensely different from items and even potions. Developers have to pack a lot more information in a weapon or other wearable content, allowing for a greater possiblity that some sections of the code can coincide with a simular game's item coding. If any of my other pages have system glitches that you would like explanations for, please feel free to let me know. Reminder: several "impossibilities" have been achieved in canon and it never explained exactly what the limitations of the games are. Category:Blog posts